On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Stephen Birch wrote:
> I have been surprised by the response to this question. I was hoping that the
> responses would be more consistent, after all when software is unreliable it
> is generally known by all users.
Steve - I tried to post an answer earlier (and it was verbose as is my
tendency!) but apparently it bounced. I will cc the list, you and
scrappy on this note.
I converted my shop from FoxPro and PROGRESS (on UnixWare) to Postgres on
Linux/BSD this past year. 12 years worth of data. My users are clinical
staff *not* computer ppl (in fact they are computer-phobic) and have made
myriad mistakes in entering and retrieving data via network and dialup
connections. Our electricians have swapped feeder cables while my boxes
were online - ouch. And I have made dubious errors in programming as I
learned perl, CGI and DBI. But throughout it all, PG has suffered all of
our blunders and our predilection for the text data type.
Social Workers love to talk, even in their clinical progress notes.
But PG rolls with the punches and everyday I find new reasons to love this
database. Performance is good (better on UnixWare and BSD than Linux)
and I am really happy that the Pg SQL is less idiosyncratic than Oracle.
Perl has become a 4GL of sorts for me (replacing PROGRESS) and my > 140
character apps are now being ported to CGI for a netscape interface.
They work well...
I can't say enuf about how much I like postgres and - how much my users
like it. They suffered with PROGRESS (slooooow) and FoxPro (corruption).
I run Oracle on Linux and have tried Sybase and Informix too. I'll stick
with Postgres. MySQL and mSQL are too much like flat file db's (concurrency
control matters here) for me to even consider using them (I did try mSQL
and didn't much care for it...)
I use Pg ver 6.3.2 which is *rock* solid altho I'm told 6.5.x is faster.
I may upgrade at some point but I feel very comfortable with 6.3.2 as I
know it runs a wide array of mission critical apps with good speed and
and good reliability. The tech support from the likes of Vadim and
Bruce (and volunteers like Herouth M and Brett) is also something I've
gotten used to...I often waffle between which unix I like best but I
know which database I prefer.
Cheers,
Tom
------- North Richmond Community Mental Health Center -------
Thomas Good MIS Coordinator
Vital Signs: tomg@ { admin | q8 } .nrnet.org
Phone: 718-354-5528
Fax: 718-354-5056
/* Member: Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility */